Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Senator Farhatullah Babar on Monday called for disbanding the Commission on Enforced Disappearances, replacing it and to form a new one with experts in investigations as members which should also be required to make its report public.
He stated this while taking part in a discussion on a point of public importance raised by senators Hafiz Hamdullah and Prof Sajid Mir who said that although the missing cleric had returned home but the identity of kidnappers remained a mystery that needed to be resolved.
The identity of the kidnappers would never be known until the commission talked to the victims recovered, investigated their ordeal and registered FIRs against the perpetrators identified by them, he said. The commission, he said was vested with these powers under the law but during the last six years of existence it had failed to do so.
Farhatullah Babar said that the commission took credit for having recovered over two thousand missing persons during the last 6 years but it has nothing to show by way of pursuing investigations or filing FIR against individuals or institutions found involved in enforced disappearances.
He said that the law had since been amended to empower the commission to make public its report directly without requiring government approval and asked what has prevented the commission from making its periodic reports public.
The PPP senator also called for making public the report of the first 2010 commission under late Justice Mansoor Kamal which worked for only one year.
Six years was a long enough time for the commission and it was time to disband it altogether, Farhatullah Babar said.
Separately on the issue of investigation in attack of journalist Ahmad Noorani, he said that reportedly geo fencing and CCTV cameras had failed to help in investigations. He said that investigating those who had alleged in the print and social media that the attack was linked to affair with a female student might be helpful in reaching some conclusion.
